Courtesy Photo | The Cleveland Harbor west breakwater under construction in Cleveland, Ohio, FY 2019....... read more read more
The Great Lakes are more than scenic, they are vital to the U.S. and Canadian economies. Together, the ports, harbors and channels that make up the Great Lakes Navigation System support nearly 238,000 jobs and generate more than $28 billion in business revenue each year.
From raw materials fueling manufacturing plants to the flow of goods and tourism that sustain local communities, this system touches nearly every part of daily life in the region.
To maintain this infrastructure, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers experts are hard at work ensuring that the harbors supporting the GLNS remains strong. Each year, the Breakwater Assessment Team inspect certain harbors to assess the condition of the structures within federal navigation channels that protect harbors from storms, ice and waves.
“We do condition assessments of harbor infrastructure to keep track of needs for repair that can inform our budgeting process, so we know what we need to ask for money for,” said Paul Bijhouwer, a coastal engineer with the USACE Buffalo District.
A Team Effort Across Districts
Before the team was established in the mid-2000s, each Corps of Engineers district on the Great Lakes conducted harbor assessments independently, creating independent priorities.
“Prior to around 2007 or so each district on the great lakes was doing this process separately,” said Bijouwer. “Then the three districts would come together and present their needs and work together to establish priorities.”
Bijhouwer explained that became an issue because each district had their own ideas of what was most important. There was a realization that there was a need to prioritize the condition of structures as a team ahead of time so that the districts weren't competing for budgets to settle questions about what the most important priorities were.
Today, the Corps of Engineers Buffalo, Detroit and Chicago districts share responsibility. Each year, one district hosts a week-long inspection tour that cover that district’s harbors. The 2025 assessments, for example, began in Wisconsin’s Sturgeon Bay before swinging down through Chicago Harbor and into Indiana.
“Each district nominated members to participate on this team and it was people from operations divisions in all three districts,” said Bijhouwer.
How Inspections Work
Inspections are thorough, with crews taking a close look at each harbor’s structures. Taking to the water, they circle the breakwaters by boat to capture overlapping, GPS-marked photographs of every angle.
These images build a detailed record of each structure’s condition and are paired with engineering assessments to identify risks and prioritize repairs.
The team uses a standardized rating system that translates field observations into numerical grades. Harbors in poorer condition are scheduled for more frequent inspections, ensuring that funds are directed where they are most urgently needed.
“The mandate was to fairly quickly look over a period five or six years, we looked at all commercial harbors on the great lakes and ranked them together,” said Bijhouwer about the creation of the BAT.
“We established initial baselines by going out and looking at all of the commercial harbors,” he said.
Commercial activity does not always mean commodities and shipping. Tourism, which can be immense, also is considered commercial activity.
“Once baseline condition ratings were in place in all three districts, we have a Great Lakes Maintenance Standard that governs the frequency at which we need to visit each harbor, based on condition,” said Bijhouwer.
Harbos in worse shape are inspected more frequently, ensuring money is used for the worst-off harbor structures. Inspections rotate between the districts, with Detroit hosting them in 2024, Chicago in 2025 and Buffalo in 2026.
“Each district has the latitude to identify the priorities in their district to identify for assessment,” said Bijhouwer. “We can quickly identify if there was recent storm damage, for example, and what harbors have not been looked at in a long time.”
This system of inspecting harbors gives each district familiarity with each other’s structures to understand the kind of failures that happen, making it easier to share resources across districts, if necessary.
A numerical rating system is used to assign a grade for each structure. Condition assessments are then sent to USACE headquarters for review, who then look at needs for navigation expenditure across the nation.
Balancing Old and New
The Great Lakes’ coastal structures span decades of engineering techniques. Buffalo, for instance, still has a significant number of older stone “laid-up” breakwaters. Once carefully stacked with shaped stone, but now deteriorating with age.
Today, overlays of rubble mound stone, a more flexible and durable method, provide reinforcement. Other districts, like Detroit and Chicago, rely heavily on vertical steel sheet pile structures.
“We don't repair those,” said Bijhouwer of the older structures once common in Buffalo. “You get good interlock when you place randomly quarried rubble mound.”
The inspections have allowed the BAT to meet the mandate to risk-based asset management of the coastal structures at the federal harbors across the Great Lakes.
“It’s been a really good tool in allowing us to have a well-informed picture of the condition of the structures and the risk associated with that condition and to prioritize the funding on that basis,” said Bijhouwer.
Looking Ahead
The Breakwater Assessment Team is also exploring ways to integrate Geographic Information Systems into their inspection process, which would streamline data collection and enhance accuracy.
“Sharing knowledge across the districts and lessons learned, and to do things better, is the goal,” said Bijhouwer. “Sharing approaches is a way to put our heads together and talk about what we're doing and how we're doing it, and what we're seeing.”
From supporting industry to sustaining tourism, the Great Lakes Navigation System is vital to economies across the region, with any disruption potentially raising costs for manufacturers and consumers. By safeguarding breakwaters and harbor infrastructure, the Breakwater Assessment Team helps protect both local communities and the nation’s economy.
| Date Taken: | 09.04.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 09.04.2025 06:42 |
| Story ID: | 547196 |
| Location: | BUFFALO, NEW YORK, US |
| Web Views: | 26 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Keeping the Harbors Strong: The Breakwater Assessment Team Protects Great Lakes Infrastructure, by MSgt Ryan Campbell, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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